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This website, and this page in particular, is intended to refresh professionals in their dedication to doing this urgent work and to introduce and educate the general public in systems thinking. Footnotes contain links to expansive background information. For parties seriously considering the development of their case specific simulation model there is a folder available (MIMES Intro)with technical and procedural content distributed at the discretion of Accounting forDesirable Futures. LLC. (AFORDABLE futures)click link to make email request.

Accounting forDesirable Futures (Afordable futures) is devoted to the support of policy development and decision making through the application of MIMES simulation models. MIMES simulation models are computer models based on established cause - effect relationships and links between ecological systems and economic activity

These are not statistical models like the weather forecast models you might be acquainted with. MIMES models are simulation models like the training models commercial airline pilots practice on.(simulation training) We have seen the experience of decision makers piloting an industry or society when given the opportunity to “practice” with MIMES. MIMES stands for Multi-scale Integrated Models of Ecosystem Services.

MIMES was born out of the recognition that in an increasingly crowded world much of our collective economic activity was “PENNY wise and POUND foolish”. We did not recognize the value of services from living systems on which we were dependent. We did not recognize that “waste lands” were reducing floods so we “developed” them. We could not assess the impact of carbon waste on the oceans so we acidified them. Caught up in the hubris of financial capital,we have overlooked the essential truth that economic activity is built on a natural capital foundation. We run the risk of “killing the goose that laid the golden egg”. Cliche, perhaps, but never more dangerously true than now. Awakened to our dependency on ecosystem services MIMES is helping us learn to account and plan for these services.

MIMES is a training tool like a flight simulator. Like a flight simulator it must be custom designed to match the decisions you are trying to guide. The basic MIMES framework is applicable to any place at local, regional, national or global scale over any useful time frame. The customizing process is a joint effort between afordable futures and identified stakeholders. This process is invariably an educational process in and of itself and is designed to be so.(scoping process) Participants will gain valuable insights into the hidden relationships they have with other stakeholders and ecosystem operations. The power of the MIMES model is in the repetitive illustration of how those relationships interact over time and space. In a MIMES simulation parties can afford to try policies and make mistakes they cannot afford to make in real life.